when AI helps largest companies reduce carbon footprint: CxOs give their views

A few bullet points @ 微软 Envision day yesterday in Paris, France, where 阿尔斯通运输 President of Digital & integrated systems Jean-Francois Beaudoin gives his advice to embrace technology and AI successfully:

1. Focus on the outcome, not on technology
2. Ensure cybersecurity
3. Manage talents, as skillsets change rapidly (attract, retain, develop)

I will let you discover Microsoft literature, as they will publish what they presented (slides & video to come).

A few bullet points during keynotes / meetings I attended.

1. Tech & artificial intelligence can help solve complex equations around the environmental dead-end in which we find ourselves.
2. Digital pollution represents 4-5% of carbon emissions. And it is growing (up to 8-10% in the next years). We need to address it, but let’s not forget the 95-96% remaining to help carbon emissions reduction. Virtual machines, shared datacenters rather than our own, leveraging existing code (low code / no code) seem to contribute to reduce energy & digital consumption. “do more with less”.
3. Metaverse examples seem to contribute to increase efficiency (at least in the industry). 3 companies explained how digital twins can help, during in design / build / operate phases. Equinor (digital wind farms – to simulate impact of aerodynamics & interference between wind mills in a wind farm and increase several % of efficiency), Mercedes-Benz AG , 可口可乐公司 (7% energy savings; next step is to reduce water consumption).
4. 阿尔斯通运输 explains how business is changing, mixing infrastructure / vehicles / supervision. Becoming a tech company (note: it reminds me of Stellantis CEO’s team vision inspired from Carlos Tavares ). Alstom needs to combine Safety / reliability / carbon footprint reduction / efficiency. Blend physical & digital world / find news business models leveraging the cloud in a regulated market. Many challenges to fix: space required for mobility / energy / client change. Digitization helps: as an example Paris-Lyon line, which is the busiest train line in Europe, can hardly support additional trains. But digitization can increase volume efficiency by 25%.
5. At 欧莱雅 , Stephane Lannuzel explains a few stakes to make beauty more efficient, responsible & inclusive. How AI can help identify skin types & suggest more adapted products for teenagers suffering from acne, when we know that there is only 1 dermatologist per 50,000 inhabitants. One of the key criteria of algorithm choice for L'Oréal is environmental performance. Employees request sustainable approach, great.
6. ? Alix Boulnois from 雅高 tells us that, as hotels are huge energy consumers, mindset is changing internally, as well as among hotel owners. Moving to the cloud is reducing energy consumption by 20%. AI helps reduce food waste by 20% in the 100 restaurants which adopted a pilot algorithm successfully. Too many hotels have on-prem IT still. Tips & tricks shared with L’Oreal & others around email cleaning days, chat policy, etc.
7. Catherine Barba Chiaramonti from Envi , explains how Luca de Meo from 雷诺 plans to be carbon neutral by 2040 … in the car industry!! What a symbol: strategic committee & ESR committee have merged. Moving from car manufacturer to green mobility services. At stake: training, when job descs are becoming obsolete.
8. One key issue though: how to measure impact properly (AI impact, environmental impact, social impact, ... the famous boring KPIs here & there, that one could regret). But needed to convince & avoid "washing".
9. The move from a monolithic business model to a multi-faceted & off-site business, what a huge challenge. We need to develop skills hubs, find talents where they are. For independant workers / freelancers, stake is not only their personal value proposition, their differentiators, but also on how to offer a sustainable service too. Great move.
10. 施耐德电气 , #AI needs to scale. Clients are energy consumers & producers. They have their micro-grid now. How to optimise when to produce for internal usage (and which internal usage), when to resell energy produced (eg #photovoltaic ), when to buy energy, when to store in #batteries and release when needed. Only AI can help here. 10 to 20% savings at stake, rapidly. Success comes with people + high value use cases (a MUST have) + processes. Use cases feed squad team which choose platforms. Not the other way. Interesting: Philippe Rambach is coming from the business, not from AI. And he is chief AI officer. Why so ? because:

business drives AI and not the opposite.

• Having a centralized AI hub at Schneider is the secret: they visit business stakeholders and understand their business to help them bring high-value now. Starting with the Why ( Serge Genetet would love it, related to Simon Sinek ) which is to help clients to be more efficient in energy consumption and be more sustainable. Having a centralized AI team makes sense for now (transversality, career path), until AI is adopted and then integrated in business lines directly. 3 phases: 'explore', then 'pilot' and last 'scale'. Checking that promised value is delivered or not.

11. At 法国兴业银行 , Sébastien Brasseur talks about data storage, a critical topic in the finance industry (archive all transactions, find them when needed, and restore them). Great insights from Microsoft expert Bernard Ourghanlian on synthetic DNA storage. AI for science, the 5th scientific revolution to reduce R&D timeline from years to ... months.

12. Orange Business presents a nice use case around towerco (telco towers to connect people & communities), with their subsidiary TOTEM , a fast moving industry where competition is fierce, talents are critical, and capacity of efficient & fast execution (eg opening a new country) is at stake, where an well-mastered DWP (Digital Workplace) is a one of the ingredients of success.

13. Startups & scaleups also addressed during the day, with Karim Jouini CEO of Expensya , Philippe Omer-Decugis GM of Contentsquare in France, and Pierre-Marin Campenon European MD of Younited . How Microsoft contributes to accelerate companies such as elqano through different programs such as Microsoft for Startups , ISV success program, up to the EBC in Seattle (executive briefing center, where to contribute to MS product roadmap).

14. A bit of advertising (which seems to be sincere and not washing as I hate green & social washing): 微软 commits to be carbon neutral in 2030, and by 2050 have more than compensated all carbon emissions since its creation in 1975.

Thanks to Corine De Bilbao who launched the day, with Judson Althoff , with Florent Pelissier , Chloé Garcia & all speakers, contributors, organisers.